Quest for a New Reality

It’s a first-ever for Hofstra. A competition-based reality show, filmed and edited entirely by students — under the supervision of 14-time Emmy award winner Professor Carlo Gennarelli.

The 40-minute program (the culmination of senior course RTVF 164) is called Quest for the Chest. And now, after a marathon single day of shooting — and months of post-production editing — Quest will have its world premiere February 13, 7 p.m., in Breslin 211 as part of “An Evening of Upper Class TV.”

“Quest for the Chest is like nothing I have ever seen or worked on at Hofstra,” said senior Zack Alexander ’18, who plays the host of Quest and also served as head writer and producer. “This show is as much of an artistic vision as it is a reality competition. I know it will leave people shocked and with a good laugh!”

Leave it to Professor Gennarelli, a David Lynch aficionado (he proudly displays his Log Lady figurine upon his Herbert School office bookshelf) and proponent of the surreal, to layer elements of mystique beneath the show’s action. As written on promo posters scattered around the Herbert School, Quest is identified as an “unscripted, meta-narrative, challenge competition,” more than simply a frantic series of challenges against the clock.

It will be easy for viewers to enjoy the end product. But for those students directly involved in the production, building the artistic vision involved extracting a narrative from hours upon hours of raw footage.

Senior Frank Yee helped coordinate camera operation and editing.

“To put on a production of this scale and magnitude took a lot of technology,” said senior Frank Yee ’18, who served as camera and visual effects editor. “I am grateful the Herbert School had all the necessary pieces to allow us to create a show which has now defined and paved the road for future classes.”

Yee was thrilled at the prospect of the show, and helped coordinate 16 individual camera feeds for the marathon one-day shoot last October. The single day of shooting turned out to be one of his favorite moments at Hofstra.

His classmate and Quest collaborator Zack Alexander agrees.

“We had a crew of about 50 students,” Alexander said, “to see our thoughts, ideas and hard work become reality (pun intended) was quite the humbling experience. We worked on such an enormous team and pulled off something great. I will cherish that moment for the rest of my life.”

“An Evening of Upper Class TV” will also showcase the newest episode of the popular Hofstra-produced sitcom, Advanced German. To RSVP for a seat in the audience, click here!

Like this:

Follow LHSC

Error: Access Token is not valid or has expired. Feed will not update. This error message is only visible to WordPress admins

There's an issue with the Instagram Access Token that you are using. Please obtain a new Access Token on the plugin's Settings page.If you continue to have an issue with your Access Token then please see this FAQ for more information.